2023.03.26

Official Test Fuji Speedway Day 2 – Fastest in continued rain on Day 2 is ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra! Fastest in GT300 is the SAITAMATOYOPET GB GR Supra GT

Official Test Fuji Speedway Mar. 26 (Sun.)

On March 26, the second day of the Official Test sessions was held at Fuji Speedway. Again, this day brought rain, and what’s more it fell more heavily than the previous day, bringing heavy wet conditions the whole day. Being rainy all day, there were some GT300 class teams that quit their tests before the end of the afternoon session.

 

 

 

　The morning session began from 9:30. Most of the GT500 class cars took to the track with the start of the session. Just after 30 minutes into the session, the top three times were held by TOYOTA GR Supra GT500 cars, the No. 36 au TOM’S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Ritomo Miyata), the No. 39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD GR Supra (Yuhi Sekiguchi/Yuichi Nakayama) and the No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra (Kazuya Oshima/Kenta Yamashita), while following together in 4th position were two Honda NSX-GT cars, the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN NSX-GT (Nirei Fukuzumi/Hiroki Otsu) and the No. 8 ARTA MUGEN NSX-GT (Tomoki Nojiri/Toshiki Oyu). During this time, there was a very large amount of water on the track, which caused a number of cars to run off the track at the TGR (first) Corner and the 300R turn, but none of the accidents were serious enough to warrant a Red Flag call. Thus, the 2-hour 15-minute session came to a close without incident.

　In the latter stages of the session, Tsuboi in car No. 36 recorded a time of 1’41.661, bettering his fastest time until then to claim the top spot. This, along with car No. 14, gave the top two positions to GR Supra cars on Bridgestone tires. These two were followed by two ARTA NSX-GT cars, No. 8 and No. 16. Although some cars were not running laps because of the heavy rain, the No. 17 Astemo NSX-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi/Nobuharu Matsushita) ran 43 laps, the largest number of any GT500 class team, to eventually finish the session in 8th position. Tsukakoshi commented afterwards, “The rain was a little heavier than in yesterday’s morning session, but we were able to try things that we hadn’t yesterday, and it turned out to be good enough conditions to test things in the car’s set-up.” Thus, he acknowledged that some beneficial work had been accomplished despite the weather.

 

 

 

 

　The final Session 4, which would be the last running time of the day, got started at 2:00 in the afternoon. In rain that was falling heavily enough to show up clearly on the TV monitors, the teams kept their eyes on the rainy skies and the amount of water on the track to decide when to go out and begin their runs.
　The first to go out on the track were the No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra and the No. 64 Modulo NSX-GT (Takuya Izawa/Kakunoshin Ohta), after which the No. 39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD GR Supra, the No. 36 au TOM'S GR Supra, the No. 1 MARELLI IMPUL Z (Kazuki Hiramine/Bertrand Baguette) and the No. 100 STANLEY NSX-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino) headed out from the pit area to begin their runs.
With the track conditions worsening, it was expected that the times from the morning session could not be bettered, but Yamashita in car No. 14 managed to come close to the fastest time from the morning, set by car No. 36, when he recorded a time of 1’41.675. However, 18 minutes into the session, the No. 23 MOTUL AUTECH Z (Tsugio Matsuda/Ronnie Quintarelli) crashed on the out-side of the 100R turn. This stopped the action for about 12 minutes to remove the car.
　After that, the rain grew a bit lighter, enabling the cars to better their times. First, it was Yamashita in car No. 14 who ran a top time of 1’40.621, bettering the fastest time from the morning. Then, Fukuzumi in the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN NSX-GT bettered that to take the top spot. But Yamashita in car No. 14 then came back with a time of 1’39.293 to reclaim the top position. Next, Miyata in car No. 36 moved up into 2nd position. After that, the No. 37 Deloitte TOM'S GR Supra (Ukyo Sasahara/Giuliano Alesi) and the No. 39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD GR Supra bettered No. 36’s time to move into 2nd and 3rd positions respectively.

　With 22 minutes remaining in the session, a GT300 class car ran off the course. This brought out the second Red Flag of the session. The action resumed with 15 minutes remaining in the session, but by this time a thickening fog made visibility worse and there would be no more improvements in the lap times. As a result, Yamashita’s time in the No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra became the fastest of the GT500 class. This was followed in order by the No. 37 Deloitte TOM'S GR Supra, the No.39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD GR Supra and the No.36 au TOM'S GR Supra, thus giving GR Supra cars a sweep of the top four positions. Finishing in 5th position was the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN NSX-GT, while the fastest time by a Nissan Z GT500 car was the 7th-position time by the No. 3 Niterra MOTUL Z (Katsumasa Chiyo/Mitsunori Takaboshi).

 

 

 

 

 

 

　Because of the heavy rain, many of the GT300 class cars decided to stay off the track, leaving only 19 cars running in the morning session, while only seven ventured out in the afternoon session.
　In the morning, the No. 2 muta Racing GR86 GT (Yuui Tsutsumi/Hibiki Taira/Hiroki Katoh) scored the fastest time of 1’50.762. The driver of this time, Tsutsumi, looked back and said, “There were rivulets of rainwater at several places around the track, but as long as you took care to avoid hydro-planing, the Bridgestone tires performed well.”
　This top time was followed by those of the No. 52 SAITAMATOYOPET GB GR Supra GT (Hiroki Yoshida/Kohta Kawaai), and the No. 65 LEON PYRAMID AMG (Naoya Gamou/Takuro Shinohara) in 2nd and 3rd positions, with this season’s new No. 31 apr LC500h GT (Kouki Saga/Kazuto Kotaka/Yuki Nemoto) taking 4th position.
　The supervisor of this new LC500h GT’s development, team manager Hiroto Kaneso, expressed his satisfaction, saying, “The work on the car has gone well. Although it was in the rain, the car was fast in the 1st and 2nd sectors of the track, so we got fairly good times. And, though it didn’t show exceptional speed in the official tests the other day at Okayama, I still thought the results were good, considering the fact that Okayama has never been a very good track for the car. So, I would say the base package of the LC500h is a good one.”

 

 

　In the afternoon’s Session 4, the No. 52 SAITAMATOYOPET GB GR Supra GT (Hiroki Yoshida/Kohta Kawaai) recorded a faster time than in the morning with a 1’48.404 lap that became the top time. In 2nd position came the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Takuto Iguchi/Hideki Yamauchi). Third position went to the No. 18 UPGARAGE NSX GT3 (Takashi Kobayashi/Syun Koide), but later it ran off the track at the 300R curve in the latter stages of the session. This caused a Red Flag to be shown, but fortunately, the machine was not damaged and was able to return to the pit under its own power.

 

 

 

　This brought the official tests at Fuji to an end, with no more scheduled before the opening round of the season. That opening round of the 2023 AUTOBACS SUPER GT season will take place at Okayama International Circuit three weeks from now on April 15th and 16th.

 

 

 

 

Although it was in these (rainy) conditions, we were able to get through our planned test menu. The (top) time we got was achieved while performing these tests, and we got this time by watching the constantly changing in the rainfall and choosing the right timing. It wasn’t a case of trying to make an all-out time attack. To tell the truth, we would have liked to run in dry conditions, but we were able to get good results in rainy conditions, so in that sense this was a good test event for us. This was my first test (since returning from injury) and I am relieved that I was able to show this kind of speed. A lot happened during the off-season, but I hope to be able to get a good start for the series in the season opener at Okayama.

 

While we wanted to avoid risks as much as possible, we ran with the intention of comparing the progress in the machine’s set-up between yesterday and today. In the afternoon session, we spent time waiting in the pit after the start watching the times of the GT500 class cars, and as their times began to approach those of the morning session, we thought that things might not be so bad after all and decided to try a run. Things turned out as we hoped, and the conditions were actually better than we thought they would be. The opening races of the season at Okayama and Fuji are on tracks that we have done relatively well on until now, but last year we encountered trouble at Okayama and weren’t able to get a very good result. So, I want to see us start out well in the opening round this time. But if we do, that will bring the burden of Success Weight to carry from there, and it will then be important how we can do at Fuji, which has been a good track for us.

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